Read Wild Town for Free Online

Away from the danger of private bedrooms and locked doors.
    Westbrook took a final look at the girl’s delicately rounded bottom; a look of unconscious yearning. Then he turned away conscientiously and descended the curving staircase to the lobby. He walked with his head tilted slightly upward, as though about to sniff the air for some evil smell. His pale puffy face was as self-assuredly haughty as that of a pure-bred Pekingese, to which it bore some slight resemblance. People were tempted to smile at their first glimpse of Westbrook. But the very briefest contact with the little man was sufficient to still the temptation. Westbrook had begun his career as a page boy. Working his way upward, he had become not only highly efficient but exceedingly tough—a man who could cope with the hurly-burly hotel world at every level and on its own terms.
    The staircase terminated in the lobby near the three front elevators. Two of the cars were out of service, as they should have been at this hour. The third was being manned by a member of the day crew, which it definitely should not have been.
    Westbrook glanced up the lobby to the front-office desks. He moved toward them ominously. The youngish night clerk, Leslie Eaton, was in the cashier’s cage. (The clerk handled all front-office duties at night.) Chaffing with him, his back turned to the lobby, was the dayshift bell captain. Neither he nor the clerk noted Westbrook’s approach. They were suddenly made aware of it by a bellowed inquiry as to what the hell was going on.
    The captain jumped and whirled. Westbrook let out another bellow. “You working this shift now? Well? Are you too stupid to talk? What about you, Eaton? You were doing plenty of yapping a minute ago!”
    “I—I—I’m sorry, sir,” the clerk stammered. “I m-mean—”
    “Been getting a lot of kicks on you. Not answering your phones. Chasing all over the house instead of staying where you belong. I know, I know”—Westbrook made a chopping motion with his hand. “You have a little auditing to do. Have to check up on the coffee-shop and the valet and so on. But that’s no reason to be gone from the desk for thirty or forty minutes at a time.”
    “I’m not!—I mean,” Eaton corrected himself, “I’m not aware that I have been absent for more than a few minutes.” He was a rosy-cheeked young man addicted to college-cut clothes.
    Westbrook looked at him distastefully, advised him that he was aware of it now, and turned back to the captain. “Well,” he demanded, “where’s the night bellboy? What’s that day man doing on the elevator?”
    “We’re both working over,” the captain shrugged sullenly. “Night boys haven’t shown up yet.”
    “Why not?”
    “Don’t know. Look, Mr. Westbrook,” the captain protested, “what are you jumping on me for? Those birds aren’t on my shift.”
    “And aren’t you tickled to death that they aren’t!” Westbrook jeered. “Got you buffaloed, haven’t they? Bet they’re in the locker-room right now, and you haven’t got the guts to run ’em up!”
    The arrival of a guest ended his harangue. The captain scurried away, gratefully, to take the man’s baggage. Westbrook left the lobby and started down the back stairs. The door to the bellboy’s locker-room was partially open. Pausing in the dimly lit corridor, Westbrook looked through the aperture.
    Like many “boys” in the hotel world, Ted and Ed Gusick, respectively the night bellboy and elevator operator, were boys in name only. Ted was about forty, Ed perhaps a year or so older. They had prematurely graying hair, and pinkish massaged-looking faces. They were well-built but slender; narrow-waisted, flat-stomached: wiry and strong. Born of the same mother, they may or may not have had the same father. Even she was unable to say. Amoral, vicious, treacherous and dishonest, they bore the hard polish of men who have spent a lifetime squeezing out of tight places.
    They were fighting,